


night and fog (and a flicker of light)

by floweryfran



Series: it is you i love more than anyone [5]
Category: Fantastic Four, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Ben Parker Lives, Bisexual Johnny Storm, Bisexual Peter Parker, Jewish Peter Parker, Not explicitly at least, Peter Parker Feels, Peter Parker Gets a Hug, Peter Parker Has Issues, Peter Parker Has Panic Attacks, Peter Parker Has a Family, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker and Johnny Storm Friendship, Religious Conflict, Religious Content, Religious Discussion, Religious Guilt, discussions of antisemitism, spideytorch but not really, they really just flirt thats it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:54:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23818006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floweryfran/pseuds/floweryfran
Summary: Peter jabs his spoon into the swirl of half-melted, sprinkle-stained vanilla left in his cup and says, with vitriol and vinegar fueled by the tilt of falling sharply into his body, “Why are people who do evil things allowed to exist?”Johnny looks up in surprise. His eyebrows go low on his forehead, casting a shadow over his eyes. “I… don’t know,” he says.Peter nods. He didn’t expect an answer. It was just something he needed to let out.Johnny continues, “But we stop ‘em. Those people. We try to balance it out, bad and good. Try to— force the world to make sense.”
Relationships: Ben Parker & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Johnny Storm, Peter Parker/Johnny Storm, re: p and j they’re not even together rlly, spideytorch implied but not actually like canon rip
Series: it is you i love more than anyone [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1676065
Comments: 33
Kudos: 147





	night and fog (and a flicker of light)

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is majorly rooted in religious discourse -- specifically, peter and ben are jewish, as they are in like 90% of my fics, and peter struggles to conceptualize religion with the reality of the world he lives in. if this makes you uncomfortable, please feel no obligation to read. further explanation and vaguely more formal trigger warning for this in the end notes. 
> 
> <3

Peter thinks he’s going to puke. 

He swings around the city for fun, tossing himself without reserve into tricks acrobats train years to perfect. He’s seen bits of his own intestines poking out of his stomach and dripping onto the sidewalk. He’s stitched bone-deep cuts across his own thigh, fallen from the sky more times than he can count, strained his lungs near to bursting trying to find the surface of deep waters. He’s watched Tony’s skin burn to a crisp, watched his arc reactor blink off, watched him breathe with a ventilator for a month, watched him wake up again down an arm and half his eyesight. Watched _May,_ his mother in all but blood, fade to grey outside a ratty bodega under a spit of April rain, his hand pressing on a bullet hole that ripped straight to her spine.

But he has never been as truly, physically sickened by something as he is now. 

He should have listened to his professor. He should have—not watched it, the documentary, he knew this would hit home for him, he knew it. Ben’s grandfather died in a concentration camp, and yet. And yet. Peter stayed in his seat, thought _I’m sure I’ve seen worse,_ even when dread began to pool in the pit of his stomach, and then he was glued there. A weight in his chest so enormous he could not rise for minutes once it had ended, the screen black, his professor stirring a discussion with those who could, miraculously, make their mouths work. 

As of now, he’s sitting under a tree and shaking, trying his best to become invisible. On repeat, behind his eyes, over and over, a bulldozer and bodies. 

His throat closes. He sucks a deep, guilty breath through his nose. Tries to count. Fists his hands far too tightly, sure that if his nails were longer he’d be bleeding.

“Pete,” comes the call, and he waves weakly. He doesn’t bother looking. He’d know this voice anywhere. “Hey,” he’s closer now, Peter hears him sit heavily, and their knees bump. “I got your text.”

Johnny always smells sort of like birthday candles just snuffed out, something pleasant and nostalgic and sweet. Now, though, it stings Peter’s nose, twinges something sour. “Hi,” he says weakly. G-d, his head is pounding.

“Aw, geez,” says Johnny. “Are you gonna boot? You look five seconds from booting. You know I’m not good with puke, but I’ll hold your hair back, if you want. I’d do that for you, really, I would.”

“Thanks,” Peter says. He opens his eyes and turns to Johnny. Cornsilk hair and angry-sea eyes and Peter almost snorts a sick laugh despite it not being funny at all. He called his most Aryan friend to talk him down from Jewish panic. His groans a little, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes and hating himself deeply. As if he knows pain compared to them. Six million to one.

“No,” Johnny says sadly. “C’mere, you goober, shh.” He wraps an arm around Peter’s shoulders and leans their backs against the bark. He’s stupidly warm and always so comforting and Peter wants to fold up, make himself pocket-square-sized so he can hide above Johnny’s heart and listen to it beat, keeping steady time. “You gonna tell me what bothered you enough to text me _SOS_ six times in a row with a pin dropped at your location?”

Johnny’s hand rubs up and down Peter’s spine and Peter is suddenly incapable of making words. He really did not think this through. He should’ve texted Ben, just gone home and waited on the couch for his shift to end so they could watch Finding Nemo and eat spring rolls until Peter inevitably cried himself out or hopped out the window and braided Doc Ock's arms into a pretty little plait. But now he’s here, and Johnny is _super_ here, and Peter doesn’t know how to say _I watched death so terrible and enormous and I can’t conceptualize evils of that magnitude. I knew, of course I knew, but now I’ve locked eyes with misery and realize it is bigger than anything G-d created._

“No,” he says. He sniffles. He’s not crying, but it’s a fine line. He's always been quick to tears. He gets that from Ben.

Johnny squeezes him tighter. “That’s cool,” he says. “No worries. We can just get fro-yo if you want.”

“Yeah,” Peter says. He tugs on Johnny’s denim jacket once, meeting his eyes. “Hey, thanks. You’re the best, you’re so nice. Such a good guy.”

“D’aww,” Johnny says, pulling away from Peter with a little grin, though his eyebrows stay knit with concern, ruining the overall effect of the display. Johnny’s heart is enormous, and always plastered right there for the world to see and take advantage of. Peter is cold, out from under his arm. “Anything for you, Pete, you know that.”

Peter could bury himself here under the tree. Instead, he takes Johnny’s proffered hand and pulls himself to his feet, trying to ignore the guilt mounting against his throat. 

The walk to their favorite frozen yogurt place is not long. Fall sits unyieldingly upon Manhattan, however, and the sky is a weighty, empty grey. The clouds are so thick as to seem one enormous, woolen blanket rather than single puffs. A biting wind carries cigarette smoke and exhaust, pungent, mixing with the scent of dying things. It’s stark, lonely. 

Johnny pulls the door open when they get there, holding it with his heel for Peter to walk through. Peter gives him a ghost of a grin and goes straight for the silver machines, grabbing the biggest paper cup he can on the way. 

He fills up with his usual—needing something like familiarity more than he can explain—and sees Johnny does, too—not that Peter knows Johnny’s order, but Peter knows Johnny’s order. While Peter sticks to vanilla with about a pound of rainbow sprinkles on top, Johnny does a caramel-coffee swirl thing and packs oreo bits in a tower so tall Peter worries it will spill all over.

When Peter reaches into his pocket to grab his wallet, Johnny elbows him and mumbles, “I’ve got this, Spidey.”

“S’this a date, Torch?” Peter says as dryly as he can manage.

Johnny goes pink. Peter wants to take it back immediately, desperately, mildly embarrassed at having made light of a day where he feels like this, but then Johnny twists his nose and goes, “Not today,” and Peter’s brain promptly turns the fuck off. It makes the Apple restart noise and flashes a loading bar. 

“Uh,” he says eloquently. 

Johnny hands his credit card to the cashier and sticks a very large spoonful of frozen yogurt in his mouth to impede his access to speech, graciously cutting that conversation short.

They move on. They always do.

Part of the reason they love this place is that there’s a tiny sitting area across from the register. The tables and chairs are way too small for fully grown adults—they look like something out of a tea set—but they bend their knees up almost to their chests and sit there anyway, fairy lights blinking delicately above them, strange surrealist paintings watching them from the wall. 

The silence between them is not strained but presents an unfortunate opportunity to Peter’s brain, which all but punts him out of the control seat, rendering him helpless to the replay of stuttered black and white film behind his eyes. 

What right does he have to be sitting here, slurping down yogurt with his best friend, free to practice in peace—to wear a kippah to class if he really wants to—when his ancestors, members of his blood family, were murdered for having the utter gall to breathe? And what, truly, what gives someone the right to kill anyone else in cold blood, without reason? An unbalanced, unwarranted killing? Peter has learned about the Holocaust ten times over. They studied it in high school. He’s seen pictures. But something about this stupid French documentary—presented with no frills and lace, just facts and pictures and minimalist, emotionless commentary—grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and shook him relentlessly. His brain is still rattling in a faintly numb way. His hands are too far away to see, the chair beneath him not much more than a concept, a hum buzzing through his veins that Peter can’t hear over the static rustle of absence he’s barely floating upon.

He doesn’t get it. It’s sour, lingering on the back of his tongue, and the scoop of yogurt melting in his mouth does nothing to mask the taste. More than anything, Peter thinks he should be angry. Peter sees it in the clench of his jaw as if he’s watching himself, as if he’s sitting in the rafters and his body is a plastic doll set in place by a pair of dimpled toddler hands. The dull ache of it is furious, really, because these people had lives—the _Nazis,_ he means, the Nazis had fucking families; they spent their days sending innocent people into _gas chambers_ then went home and _kissed their children._

And his G-d, the G-d of his people, of his father and Ben and their parents before them, watched it happen. And did nothing.

Peter jabs his spoon into the swirl of half-melted, sprinkle-stained vanilla left in his cup and says, with vitriol and vinegar fueled by the tilt of falling sharply into his body, “Why are people who do evil things allowed to exist?”

Johnny looks up in surprise. His eyebrows go low on his forehead, casting a shadow over his eyes. “I… don’t know,” he says. 

Peter nods. He didn’t expect an answer. It was just something he needed to let out. 

Johnny continues, “But we stop ‘em. Those people. We try to balance it out, bad and good. Try to—force the world to make sense.”

Peter nods again. 

“Peter,” Johnny says, all quiet and delicate. Johnny gets like this sometimes, rare as it is. When he’s worried. Peter sort of wishes he wouldn’t, because it makes it hard to be furious. Peter would literally rather Johnny punch him in the face and tell him to suck it up. He cowers and squirms under attention as earnest as this.

“What,” Peter snaps. “C’mon, Johnny. What.”

Johnny kicks his shin under the table. “Cut it out,” he says, still frowning. “When you’re sad, you get all grumpy and mean. I hate it.”

Peter groans and buries his face in his hands. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling. It’s easier to feel nothing, but he’s a patchwork quilt of awful right now.

Johnny presses his foot on top of Peter’s, steadily increasing the pressure until Peter peers up from over his fingers. The decor around them seems forced, far away. Bright colors and squiggly shapes and Peter could tear the walls down with his bare hands if he wanted. He could bloody the nimble tips of his fingers here. Could bury himself under the concrete.

His stomach rolls again.

Johnny pouts at him. “I’m all ears for you, Petey,” he says. He cups his palms behind the shells of his ears, pushing them forward. 

Peter feels something in him shift—a fault line giving in under duress. Where he was angry, stinking piss and oil slicks, he’s now horror-struck. It smacks him straight across the face, mortified and miserable and full of something even bigger—fear of something he can’t fight with fancy tech and quick fists. He's never been good at being helpless. 

Peter covers his eyes as a sharp pain builds behind them, his heart skipping something clumsy like hopscotch on a craggly sidewalk. He mumbles, “Bathroom,” and pushes his chair back, vision blurred, ankles numb. He stumbles to the back of the shop. He shoulders the door open and lists until he reaches the sink, grabbing the rim between his hands, breathing loudly. He can imagine it. Sees the vent near the ceiling, above his head. It wouldn't be hard for someone to slip a canister of Zyklon-B in there, to let it spit and fume furiously until Peter’s lungs seized, froze, and he would fall limp to the floor, paralyzed and confused and stone-cold-fucking-dead, like a pebble skipped across the surface of a pond floating onto the sand below. He’s not scared it will happen, not really, but the ease of it, tactically, is undeniable. Morally, though. How, how, how.

The door opens. “Just me,” Johnny says upon seeing the frantic light jagged in Peter’s eyes. “You forgot to lock the door, so, really, you brought this upon yourself.”

“You suck,” Peter forces out, pressing a hand to his chest, closing his eyes. Johnny doesn’t suck. Most things suck—the world sucks, society sucks, history sucks—but Johnny doesn’t.

“I can deal with you thinking that, if you just let me help,” Johnny says, and whatever little breath Peter had been able to suck in wooshes right out of his lungs. 

Johnny must take Peter’s stunned silence as acquiescence because he comes closer, one hand out, face soft and sad. “Can I—?” he says.

Peter does not mean to nod his head. Peter’s head is a piece of shit. 

Johnny closes the distance between them and turns Peter towards him. Peter spends a long, terrifying second hovering, unable to ground himself without his grip on the sink, before Johnny collects him up in his arms and presses Peter tight to his chest like he’s trying to force Peter’s limbs back together. Peter finds two handfuls of Johnny’s jacket and clings.

“Alright,” Johnny says. “There you go. Let it out, dude. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Shut up,” Peter says.

Johnny snorts. “Sure, Pete.” But he does. Sways them, barely, and silently lets the panic work itself out of Peter’s system in the form of violent trembles and stuttered, anxious breaths.

One of Johnny’s hands finds the back of Peter’s head. His blunt, bitten nails scratch gently at Peter’s scalp. Peter thinks it’s the only thing keeping him from falling to the ground, a thousand Legos that won’t click into place.

He slows, a little at a time and then all at once, sagging against Johnny, exhausted. Johnny catches his weight like he had been expecting it. Like he was meant to hold it.

“Better?” he asks.

Peter grunts a little, eyelids heavy, head still aching fiercely. 

“Good,” Johnny says.

He doesn’t let go. Peter has never been so grateful and pained to sort-of have him.

xx

Johnny walks him home. Not to their shared apartment, but to Ben’s place—the one he and Peter had gotten after the second snap on Tony’s dime, out of Forest Hills and into the city, to be closer to school, closer to Starks’ new Manhattan penthouse, farther from the place that had shown the two of them nothing but pain. 

Johnny leads him all the way to the front door, an arm slung over Peter’s shoulders. He’s been chewing his lips the whole way, shooting Peter furtive glances from the corner of his eye. He doesn’t look twenty anymore. He looks seventeen and confused, the way he was when he and Peter met on the roof of a bar in Bed-Stuy, both of them wide-eyed and disoriented in torn spandex suits, both recently un-snapped, Johnny bleeding and crying because he’d followed his sister to the stars with the hankering to be a spacecraft pilot and came back stinking of ash and gung-ho to fight crime untrained at her side. It’s the first time since then that Peter has felt bigger than Johnny, and he hates it.

“Hey,” Peter says, leaning against the architrave.

“Hi,” says Johnny. Even his voice sounds small.

“Oh, please, don’t,” Peter says weakly. “Please don’t, Jay, I’ll be fine.”

“I know,” Johnny assures, grabbing Peter’s hand impulsively and squeezing. “I just worry. Peter.”

Something in Peter is still loose. Johnny is so strong, though. Capable as fuck. He can probably slip it back into place. That must be why Peter’s subconscious had texted him in desperation. Needing something from him. 

“Johnny,” Peter says. A name has never felt so reverent slipping off his tongue. He thinks he could easily be mortified right now, but there is something clicking behind Johnny’s eyes that keeps the flush from pouring over Peter’s cheeks. He thinks maybe this has been a long time coming. He thinks maybe this is a mistake. He thinks this might be like balm for him. He thinks he's taking advantage. He leans in and stops thinking altogether.

Johnny’s breath smells like burnt caramel. Stuttered and slow, they’ve ended up with a scant inch between their lips. Peter is, again, falling. It’s different, now, lower in his stomach. Less nervous. Or maybe more.

The door swings open and smacks them on the hips. They tear apart sharply, standing what is probably a suspicious number of feet apart, Peter’s hand snapping to the back of his neck and Johnny’s arms crossing over his chest.

Ben stands there, a plastic trash bag in hand, eyes wide and bewildered. “Oh,” he says. “Hey, guys. You want some soup? I made chicken noodle.”

“Um,” Johnny says, his goldish skin giving way to a furious peach-colored blush that dips down his neck and curls over his ears. “I should—an essay—um, due tomorrow, so I should. Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Ben agrees, eyebrows knit together, so oblivious it’s almost funny. 

Peter says, “Please I would like some soup, please,” and nearly kicks himself in the balls, but he thinks he ought to go easy on himself what with the day he’s had. 

Ben taps the door twice with a knuckle, frowns at them both again, and then goes back inside with his bag of trash in hand. 

Peter runs a hand through his hair and huffs a breath. Stupid. That was almost stupid, almost like using Johnny, which would’ve been a dick move, no matter how utterly knotted Peter’s stomach remains. Bad timing. Just—generally bad.

Johnny, still flushed, says, “So I’ll…”

“Yeah,” Peter says. 

“You gonna—?”

“For the night.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“I’ll see you in the morning?” Peter says. He means to come off as politely uninterested, but sounds stupidly, stupidly hopeful.

“Yes,” Johnny says quickly. He nods aggressively. Peter melts, just a little. “Yup, I will—see you then very much.”

“Okay,” Peter whispers. 

Johnny nods. He stares for a long moment. Nods again. Turns on his heel and goes, clomping down the stairs like a really loud buffalo.

Peter presses his palms to his face and groans.

Ben’s face peers around the door. “I interrupted something, didn’t I?” he says.

In the absence of Johnny, Peter feels deflated. He nods a little.

Ben says, “Damn. Unintentional cockblock. Sorry, Pete.”

Peter winces, screwing his whole face to the right until Ben reaches a hand out and grabs his wrist loosely. 

“Can I come in?” Peter says brokenly.

“What kinda’ question—of course you can come in. It’s your house too, dummy.”

Peter lets Ben tug him inside. He drops his backpack and toes his shoes off, feeling young and freshly traumatized and in dire need of a hug. Ben stands, watching as Peter pulls his jacket off. The trash bag is right there beside the door, under the coat hooks, and Peter says, exhausted, “Ben, you can—take the trash out, you can do that.”

“Oh, shit, yeah,” Ben says. He snorts a self-deprecating laugh, then grabs it. “I’ll—two minutes.”

Peter watches Ben go down the hall with just socks on his feet, and shakes his head. 

He makes his way inside and experiences a very strange sense of displacement while staring at the curtains on the windows and the new grey pillow on the couch. _Rebel Without A Cause_ is paused on the TV, and thank fuck that’s familiar or Peter might just fall through the floor. He feels really, really bad. Too small for his skin. A raisin in August, the shore swallowed by a hurricane sea, a fingerprint smudge on a charcoal drawing. 

“Hey,” Ben says softly, startling Peter. “Sorry, sorry. What’s up?”

Peter shrugs, his hands shoved into his armpits. 

“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” Ben hurries to say, stepping towards Peter. Peter had never noticed before, but they walk the same way: left foot a little splayed. “You’re welcome here whenever, always, all the time, but you look”— he waves his hands a little— “not great.”

“Very not great,” Peter says. “Go wash your trash hands so I can have a hug.”

Ben hurries to do just that. Peter waits in place for a moment before shuffling to the couch and falling limply onto it, bouncing on the cushions.

When Ben makes his way into the room, he says, “I put a pot of soup on the stove for you. That okay?”

Peter nods, hoping Ben can see the gratitude in his eyes.

Ben nods once, firmly, then sits beside Peter with a huff. He wiggles into the cushions. “Talk to me, honey. What’s going on in that big brain of yours?”

Peter snorts derisively. “I… I’m mad, because I don’t understand something.”

“Mm,” says Ben. “So you came to the all-knowing genius in your life for answers, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Peter says.

Ben stays silent for a moment, not looking at Peter. It is easier this way, Peter thinks. Not looking at him. Divided attention is better, doesn’t tin-can crumple him, but, more than anything, he’s selfishly glad he won’t be able to see the ache in Ben’s eyes this way.

“We watched a documentary in my antisemitism course today,” Peter says carefully, each word rolling in his mouth like a glass marble. “It was, ah. About the Holocaust. And it was graphic.”

“Oh,” Ben says, understanding.

“What type of G-d,” Peter whispers, “would let something like that happen to His people?”

A breath pushes out of Ben’s lungs. “Geez, Pete,” he says, “I don’t know. I really don’t.” His arm slides around Peter’s shoulders. “I wish I could answer that insightfully and religiously, but I don’t, um, have something like that for you.” He sighs loudly, scooting down on the couch to lean his neck over the back of it. Peter mirrors the position so they stare at the water-stained ceiling side by side. “I can tell you what I think, though, if that would help.”

“Please,” Peter says. 

Ben hums. “I just trust Him,” Ben says, as if that explains everything. Easy. “I figure He’s got some sort of plan, right? It must be bigger than anything I could ever conceptualize. He must have a reason. He’s got to. Otherwise, what’s the point, y’know?”

“But maybe there isn’t a point,” Peter says. “Maybe the point is that there’s no point. I just—Ben, I can’t understand how someone who is supposed to have, like, eternal power and complete control over the fabric of the universe or whatever could—watch it happen, sit there and watch all of that happen to His people—to _anyone,”_ Peter corrects emphatically, “to anyone at all, and do nothing. That doesn’t sound like a loving, overseeing G-d. That sounds—I don’t even know. I can’t even put a word to it.”

“Hm,” Ben says. He nods, hair rasping against the couch cushions. “I see exactly what you’re saying. And it makes sense. I just don’t agree.”

“Hm,” Peter echoes. Then, “Why?”

Ben snorts a laugh. “Probably because I was raised closer to the event? To parents who were alive for it all. If _they_ could believe after that—shit. I could too.”

“Huh,” Peter says. “So you just, like, choose to believe anyway.”

“Yup,” Ben says. 

“Even after… everything,” Peter says carefully.

“After May, you mean?” Ben says dryly, turning his head to look at Peter. 

Peter nods. “And the snap,” he says. “Y’know. Everything.”

“Even after everything,” Ben affirms. “Especially after everything. I could never just accept G-d taking May so early if I didn’t believe there was a purpose for it.”

Peter lets that sink in. “So, like, d’you think He just needed a buncha’ angels around nineteen-thirty or so? And figured Hitler was as good a game plan as any to get ‘em?”

Ben laughs out loud, his back arching with the force of it. “I dunno, Pete,” he says, tugging him closer to his side. Ben plants a firm, loud kiss on his forehead. “I really have no clue.”

Peter melts into Ben, the constant solidity of him, closing his eyes. “I just—” he tries. He breathes, then starts again. “I got so mad, seeing it. The documentary, I mean. And I was mad at myself for being mad, and I was confused, and I was, like, so appalled.”

“For good reason,” Ben says. “It’s fucking appalling.”

“Yeah.” Peter breathes some more. “Ben, I dunno if I could just, like. Forgive G-d for letting it happen.”

“It’s okay if you don’t,” Ben says. 

For a moment, Peter feels frozen.

“You don’t have to understand it, Peter,” Ben says softly. “Some things are too much for us to understand. You don’t even have to believe in Him. I’m not the boss of—what you believe. That’s up to you, and your heart. Your big, bleeding heart, gosh, of _course_ it doesn’t make sense to you, honey. Those were enormous atrocities, and you can’t even bring yourself to sit and watch someone get a papercut without intervening. There is no universe in which you would accept _mass genocide,_ past, present, or future.”

Peter wonders if he should be offended by that. He finds he isn’t at all. 

“It’s… hard,” Ben says. “All of this. G-d, religion, the morality of—everything ever. You don’t even need to be sure about any of it: whether it exists or not. G-d, I mean. An afterlife. You can have your own opinions. You can pray, or not. You can turn to science. The earth.” Ben gestures with the hand that isn’t squeezing Peter’s shoulder. “It should all be personal. It’s yours, Pete. Your brain, your beliefs. As long as it brings you peace, I’m so, so happy for you.”

Peter burrows closer into Ben’s warmth, feeling extraordinarily small.

“Okay?” Ben presses.

“Yeah,” Peter says. “Thanks. That, um. That helped, actually. A lot.”

“Good,” Ben says, and the one syllable is so overwhelmingly warm that Peter’s eyes prickle. “I love you, okay? No matter what.”

“Love you too,” Peter says. “I’m gonna go get my soup.”

Ben shoves Peter’s face to the side, keeping him sat down, as he stands with crackly knees. “Don’t even. I’ll grab it. Want some juice?”

“Do you have oh-jay?” Peter mumbles, squirming into the cushions. 

Ben grins fondly. “I always keep some for you, Petey.” He starts into the kitchen. “Like leaving sugar water for butterflies. I know you’ll stop by eventually as long as I’ve got juice in the fridge.”

Peter, finally, lets himself smile. 

xx

The night goes on and Peter steadies. He doesn’t accept, not even close, not even a little, but he finds the weight of it beginning to mold to the shape of his shoulders. Enough to bear it more properly. 

He showers in his old bathroom and slips into a pair of old sweats and climbs into his old bed with the evening-sky-patterned sheets. Yellow stars spritzed on a background of deep navy. They are something he can believe in, at least. Constant. Bright, sure, beautiful, helpful. Always leading people home. He thinks Ben is like that. He wants to be like that, too.

Peter checks his phone one last time before closing his eyes, and is glad he does.

**marshall from paw patrol** (12:56)

sleep good, ok? call me if u need anything. leaving ringer on 4 u

**peepee** (1:07)

:D

romance™

**marshall from paw patrol** (1:08)

anything for u, lover boy

Peter puts his phone face-down on his nightstand and closes his eyes. There are many things out of his control—too many, and it grates him, it always will—but the promise of having something he can grab between his two hands and say _I will keep you safe, I can have you and hold you and protect you from the world—_ the promise of that manages to settle his heart into his chest, to bring something like ease to his troubled mind. For now, it’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> further explanation! 
> 
> i just watched a french documentary from the 50's called "night and fog" for a lecture i'm taking about the history of antisemitism. i ached for a full day and had two separate anxiety attacks before i gave in to the urge to write this. it's after 3:30 am and im finally about to press post.
> 
> tw for peter being panicky and deeply affected by holocaust themes. i do not describe anything from the doc in detail because i think i would truly, truly vomit if i did. im not going to link the doc bc i think it's extremely triggering, but i will let you know it is posted on vimeo if you, for some reason, want to watch it.
> 
> i also want to add that i do not want any of the thoughts in this fic to come across as being Mine: they are what i feel peter and ben might think on the subject in this particular universe. if you disagree, that's fine, but i want to make it clear that i will delete any antisemitic comments faster than you can say _devil's advocate._
> 
> if you have polite discourse to be held, i will entertain it in the comments section, but, before that, i also want to explain that i, personally, am not jewish, and all of my experiences with the religion come from a late jewish aunt of mine, jewish friends, the antisemitism course i am in, and abundant personal research before writing any of these pieces, since they tend to have religious themes and my personal NIGHTMARE would be offending anyone who is jewish. my purpose for making peter and ben jewish- which is also heavily implied in the comics, for those who do not know (which is literally fine, not everyone reads the comics and comics vs mcu is NOT discourse i will be entertaining rn)- is representational. as a white person who was raised by catholic parents, i'm tired of white catholics being the main characters in every story i read, so i cannot imagine what it must feel like for people who ARENT white catholics. terrible, surely. i'm so sorry. truly.
> 
> furthermore, i want to make it very very clear that i have no problem with people who ARE practicing any religion- i think religion is excellent and that if it brings peace to you, that is BRILLIANT- but i do not personally practice a religion. the only thing im sure of is that absolutely anything can be true re: religions. god? sure. godS? sounds good. no deity but an afterlife? sign me up. etc.
> 
> tl;dr: please be polite to everyone here. this is a place of complete acceptance from me, and i hope it will be one from you as well. the purpose of this fic was just for me to try and conceptualize horror and tragedy. that's all. if i have made a grievous error in any way here, please o please let me know and i will do my best to fix it. again, my literal biggest nightmare is accidentally offending people.
> 
> i love you all, every single one. sarcasm squad update tomorrow, probably. or later today. who knows at this point with that fic. certainly not me.


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